Except where stated in the post, photos posted on or after January 1st, 2014 are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.Basically, do what you like with those images but always credit Donncha Ó Caoimh as the author and link here. You'll also have to license the photo under the same license.

No, this isn’t the landfill site near the Kinsale Road, Cork. It’s the beautiful beach at Myrtleville in County Cork last Tuesday. Disgusting isn’t it? My wife met a friend there who said that last year 3 people would clean the beach each day but this year, because of cuts, only one person was available. Apparently that morning he had filled up three sacks after the crowds the day before.

What you don’t see here is the used nappy on the road above, the half full carton of rotting salad, the plastic bags and other rubbish. You can’t smell the acrid burning rubbish in an overflowing bin near the slip way. You also missed the Gardai who took away two inebriated underage girls who had been singing and staggering across the beach or the man who was manhandled to the ground outside the gate to Bunny Connellans and probably arrested by the Gardai who ran passed me. A typical day at the beach?

What the hell? What’s up with people? Are they that ignorant of their environment? I remember watching that episode of Mad Men where the Draper family have a picnic in a picturesque green park. Their shiny new car is behind them. Everything is spotless and neat. Then when they get up to leave, the kids are tidied but afterwards the parents toss their rubbish on the pristine lawn. I wasn’t the only one to notice. Great comments on that blog post.

Kilkee Beach in County Clare is a beautiful stretch of sand going on forever and ever. Well, seems like it, it’s a massively long beach and on the day we accidentally discovered it the sun was beating down on us. Hooray!

I have no idea what RMA stands for. That little rock was sitting next to the shell where I found it.

Footsteps in the sand speak of many people passing this way.
Shot at Garrettstown Beach in October 2006. A very different shot to my previous Footprints in the sand.

Remember a few weeks ago I explained how I backed up my photos? Good thing I have backups as my first external drive has possibly died. It wouldn’t mount at first, and the drive kept making “spinning up” sounds but it has finally been recognised by Linux. Unfortunately attempts to get even a directory listing result in input/output errors. I’m doing an fsck of it but I’ll probably be buying another drive tomorrow!

Everything is backed up. There’s 411GB, or 8 years of photos on there, and lots of family videos I’d hate to lose. Thankfully they’re safe.